Mayor Jim Dear addressing the crowd during a presentation of the proposed Mustafa Kemal monument.

CARSON, CA – The Los Angeles Turkish Association has lobbied the City of Carson, to erect a statue of controversial Turkish dictator, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the City’s International Sculpture Garden. The City Council is scheduled to vote on the proposed installation of the Ataturk monument on Wednesday, March 4th.

This project, which has so far garnered the approval of the City’s Landscape and Monument Sub-Committee, was first proposed in 2012 by Los Angeles Turkish Association as a “Turkish Cultural project.”

Ataturk is considered the founding father of the Republic of Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He is known to have been responsible for continuing the deportations and ethnic cleansing of Armenians from Cilicia and Greeks from Anatolia until 1923. His tactics of silencing political dissent within Turkey, were also violent and often targeted at religious minorities such as Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Alawis and Greeks.

The monument’s Website, which is soliciting 150 thousand dollars for its construction and maintenance, urges constituents to help commemorate Ataturk “among the world leaders who advanced the cause for liberation, freedom, and democracy.” Yet historians note, it is due to Ataturk’s authoritarian rule, that Turkey was a one-party state or under military rule for the majority of the 20th century, and has yet to establish itself as a county where basic democratic values and freedoms are respected.

The installation of this monument also comes at a very sensitive time for the Armenian-American community, which is focused on commemorating the Centennial commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was a leading figure in Turkish society to perpetuate genocide denial – the current Turkish State’s position towards the horrors committed by their predecessors.

Community members within the City of Carson have expressed their desire to make their voices heard and object to the blatant disregard to historical truth that is being put forth in support of the statue.

Council meeting will take place at 701 East Carson Street, starting at 5 pm., in City Hall’s Helen Kawogoe Chambers. Members of the City Council are; Mayor Jim Dear, who can be contacted via email at [email protected] or by phone at (310) 952-1700 ext.1000, Mayor Pro Tem Elito M. Santarina, Councilmember Lula Davis-Holmes, Councilmember Albert Robles, City Treasurer Karen Avilla, and City Clerk Donesia Gause will also be present at the meeting.

2 comments
  1. Sylva Portoian · Top Commenter · Works at Pediatrician & Poet

    The criminal unknown gene, so-called Ataturk …
    Was he Gandhi…or Mandela.?…
    Was he Churchill or Franklin…?

    Read My Verse …Which bursts from my cardiocytes…
    Read and judge …How many astrocytes i squeezed and
    how many tears still stagnate in my retinae.

    How Many Innocent Children Were Trained
    To Gun Down Their Own Race
    ‘Still–Till Today!’

    Urgent––Urgent––Urgent

    The world should know, their Turkish populaces should know,
    That some Turkish Army Members are Turkified Armenians!
    Trained to kill their nation the real Armenians . . .
    Born from innocent mothers, trained to kill their
    brothers, sisters, relatives, kin . . .!

    How can anyone imagine such a distress!
    If ‘thy’ discovered . . . through studying DNA . . .s
    His real genes, his artful origin, his honest race . . .
    Tell me . . . Who can oppress? . . . How can Thee Oppress!
    Such an unbelievable tragic–despairs!

    Unknowingly––Unknowingly
    “Even to kill any human is a sin, how about your kin?”

    Like the Armenian female orphan,
    Pilot Hatun Sebilciyan (Sabiha Gokcen)
    Ataturk trained her to be a pilot and send her to bomb
    Her Armenian Turkified nation, in Dersim (1937-1938);
    Bombing 10.000 innocents, and the rest 50.000, leaving them homeless.
    Was it a tiny genocide! Pain is never healed yet!

    If anyone use word Dersim or says, “I’m from Dersim”
    Everyone who lived during that era will remember what does it mean!
    “Dersim and its despairs!”
    Bombing innocents and only innocents;
    As no fighter left to fight against savages, against Turkish godless race!

    The world should know who are the savage Turks . . .
    See her birthdate, she was born and died the same day and month
    (on March 22, 1913, and died in March 22, 2001*, a real lie)
    And how unrealistic that orphans they know their birthdate!

    Journalist Hrant Dink was gunned because of her,
    He said, and published in his Turkish newspaper ‘Agos’
    “She, Hatun (so-called Sabiha), genetically was an Armenian Orphan”, Ataturk snatched her from the orphanage!
    I will continue my message with Hrant’s to say,
    She was trained to kill her own and other innocent Alevi populaces!

    Dr. Sylva Portoian
    From my historical poetry collection …
    “BRING-OUT, Our Genocided Skulls & Artful Hands” 2015
    ______________
    Wikipedia, 2014; I put the date of birth, if it is changed later, people should know!

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